West Brom 0-2 Newcastle: 7 Key Ways The Baggies Were Blunted

5. Defending From The Front... But Not Quite The Front

Against Liverpool, Newcastle showed how effective not closing down centre-halves can be when playing against a team that looks to play through their opponent. As Brendan Rodgers attempted to con Newcastle into over-committing their strikers and leaving deeper lying midfielders unmolested to dictate play, Pardew simply refused to take the bait. And while the same thing happened against West Brom, with the Baggies looking to give Mulumbu and Chris Brunt the ball from deep, Newcastle left Ayoze Perez to annoy the centre-halves, while Moussa Sissoko stayed in line with the wide-men to push on the playmakers and stop as much of West Brom's midfield play as possible. In particular, Newcastle got a lot of joy out of pressing the appallingly error-prone Andre Wisdom, who was badly out of his depth at right-back and seemed simply to give up under pressure. Newcastle might still let the opposition have a lot of the ball, but they don't get as much time on it as they used to, and against West Brom there was clearly an agenda to take more possession than the high 30s stats that have emerged from the past three games.